


dreaming of a true love's kiss

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enchanted AU, Genderfluid Character, Other, Pining, True Love's Kiss, does it count as a songfic if the movie it's based off has the songs built in already, minor caleb/cali but they are both gay it won't last, vox machina are CATS
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22997575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “—then I looked into the well, as my teacher had suggested,” says Caleb, stepping out of the elevator just behind Molly, “but I must’ve leaned too far, because the next thing I knew, I was falling so far and so fast that I almost thought I would die.”“Is that a habit of yours,” Molly says distractedly, “falling off of stuff?”“Only when someone is there to catch me,” says Caleb.or: Mollymauk Tealeaf doesn't believe in true love. at least, not until a handsome almost-prince falls onto him from a casino billboard. too bad the guy's engaged to a womanandis a long way from home. wherever the fuck this home called Exandria is. (and seriously, where is it?)alternately, an Enchanted AU.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha Nydoorin, Fjord/Caduceus Clay, Jester Lavorre/Calianna, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, Nott the Brave/Yeza Brenatto
Comments: 22
Kudos: 62





	dreaming of a true love's kiss

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "True Love's Kiss" from the Enchanted soundtrack.

New York is weird.

What, it’s true. Molly’s lived in the city for as long as he can remember, and the only really consistent thing about New York is that it’s just really fucking _weird_ , sometimes. Just look at the people on the subway he usually shares a train car with—at least one will be carrying their dog in their bag, and another will be dressed like they stepped out of an anime, and _another_ is probably seeing ghostly fish float past him.

Tonight, though, he’s not taking the subway for once. There’s apparently some rail maintenance going on, so Molly elects to just hop into Jester’s teeny little car for once despite the traffic that no doubt is going to greet them.

Which is why it’s been an hour since the show and they’re only now making it down a relatively deserted street halfway to Molly’s apartment. Jester’s chattering about a stage production she’s in as an understudy, about the rehearsals she just had and how excited she is to go onstage. “Not that I want Portia to get sick or anything,” she hurriedly adds. “But I’m super excited to bring my take on Eliza to the stage! I’ve been practicing ‘Burn’ a _lot_ , it’s gonna make you cry _so hard_.”

“I don’t doubt it will,” says Molly, before his eyes flick back to the outside world. Streets with maybe one or two cars passing by are a rarity in New York, which is why Molly usually just takes the train, so to have a mostly unimpeded view of the sidewalk is—novel, to say the least. He’ll savor it for as long as he can.

He’s not paying attention to much else when Jester slams on the brakes and says, “Holy shit, is that guy _on the billboard_?”

Molly rips his gaze away from the sidewalk, slick from the rain pouring down, and to Jester, who’s undoing her seatbelt, her eyes fixed on something in front of and above them. He looks away from her, in the direction she’s staring at, and—blinks.

There’s a billboard he passes by on his way home, sometimes. It’s a pink fairytale castle lit at night with bright neon, advertising for the long-closed Paradise Castle Casino downtown. Molly’s long stopped paying much attention to it beyond using it as a sad little landmark, and if it hadn’t been for Jester’s cry, he wouldn’t have even noticed the new addition.

Because, yeah—there’s a guy hammering on the castle’s door. From this distance, it looks as if he’s wearing something that wouldn’t look out of place in a period drama: a white coat with trailing coat tails, dark gloves, and what Molly’s pretty sure are riding boots of some kind.

“That’s probably an animatronic,” says Molly.

The guy slips a little, then immediately presses himself flat against the billboard.

“That is not an animatronic,” says Jester.

“Obviously!” Molly huffs, undoing his own seatbelt and opening the car door. Goddammit, running in these heels is already hellish enough, and now there’s _rain_ too. He walks very briskly instead, trying to stay just behind Jester as she sprints towards the billboard.

“What are you doing up there?!” she calls out to the man.

“I was trying to gain entrance to the castle! Someone here may know how to get me home!” the guy calls back down, just as Molly comes up behind Jester. Now that he’s closer, he can definitely tell the man is no animatronic—he moves too fluidly, for one thing, and the fear on his face as he determinedly tries not to look down is too real. “Do either of you know of a way to get inside?”

“Nope!” Molly calls up. “How in the hell did you even get up there?”

“I climbed!” the man shouts back, trying to inch along the edge. “I can—I can try to climb down, but with the rain I’m not half so sure I can hold on for very long!” Another step, and—

Molly moves _fast_ , is the thing, especially when he’s motivated enough. Keeping someone from going _splat_ against the pavement is a pretty good motivation, and Molly’s just barely managed to get into place below him before the man is already falling.

Right onto his face.

The next thing Molly knows, he’s lying flat on his back with a—a _very attractive_ fellow on top of him. Up close, he can count the freckles on the man’s face, see the startlingly blue eyes, hear the beat of his heart against Molly’s chest. His hair and coat are darkened from the rain, and strands of red hair cling to the sides of his face.

 _Oh,_ Molly thinks, suddenly, _you’re cute._

The man says, “Oh, gods, I’m sorry,” and scrambles off Molly to get to his feet. Up close, Molly can take in more details about his outfit, and boy, Ornna would have a _fit_ if she saw this guy—a medieval, cream-colored, long-sleeved padded shirt, whaddaya call them, a _gambeson_ paired with a formal Regency-era tailcoat that hasn’t been buttoned, and riding boots favored by Victorian men? She’d die from fury at the historical inaccuracy.

Molly’s breath sticks in his throat. Molly has never been all that concerned about historical inaccuracy.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Jester says, coming up. “Molly, are you okay?! Hold on, I’ll heal you a little bit—”

“I’m fine,” says Molly, letting his tail flick lightly against hers to reassure her. “A bit bruised, but nothing an ice pack at home can’t fix.”

“You’re sure?” Jester asks. Then she turns to the new guy and says, “Are _you_ okay? You fell on top of Molly from super high up, so you’re probably hurt—”

“No, no, I’m fine,” says the man. “Merely bruised, that is all. I don’t want to impose on you.”

“You wouldn’t be, I am very very good at healing people,” says Jester. She wiggles her fingers, and Molly sees the white sparks of magic spin playfully around her fingertips. “But I’ve never healed a _prince_ before,” she adds with a big grin.

“Oh,” says the man, eyes widening, “you know who I am?”

“Uh, wait,” says Molly, “Jes, back up, did you say _prince_?” He looks the man up and down, and says, “He looks more like an actor to me, really. Where’s your place? We can drive you there and you can sober up.”

“I am sober, though,” says the guy. “And not an actor, either.” He bows to Molly and Jester, which is maybe the first time ever that anyone’s bowed to Molly off the stage, and it’s— _weird_ , really. But it is nice. “My name is Caleb Widogast,” says the man, straightening up. “I am technically not a prince as of yet, but I am to be married to Princess Calianna, my true love and the presumptive heir to the Kingdoms of Exandria.”

Oh fuck and shit and balls, he’s _taken_. Molly’s heart plummets right into his stomach. _Probably for the best,_ he tells himself.

Jester whispers, “Molly, he’s a _real prince!_ And he’s going to get married to a princess!” She grins, practically bouncing on her heels. “This is so _cool_!” she proclaims. “Wait till I tell Beau about this!”

“I am supposed to get married _tomorrow_ ,” says the not-prince, whose name is Caleb and whose eyes are unfairly blue and whose fiancée is going to be real freaked out to hear that her beloved prince is in fuck knows where. “But I—I fell into a well and wound up here, and I cannot find my way home.”

Usually when people fall down wells, they end up at the bottom of the well. This is the first time Molly’s ever heard of someone falling down a well and _not_ ending up breaking something at the bottom. Makes him kinda doubt this guy is all there, makes him worry about Caleb’s fiancée and family. They must be worried sick about him by now.

“We’ll help you find your way home,” says Jester. “First let’s get a cab so we can get you to Molly’s place, he can put you up while we look—Molly, my phone’s dead, can you get an Uber?”

“God, no,” says Molly, “the last time I ordered an Uber the arsehole got thoroughly stuck in traffic. I’d have been earlier if I’d _walked_.” But he pulls his phone out anyway, and says, “Do you know your fiancée’s number? We can let her know you’re sleeping at my apartment, she must be worried sick.”

“Her—number?” Caleb asks, brow furrowing. “Do you mean her favorite number? Strange thing to ask, we only met two days ago.”

“Uh,” says Molly. He might only have three years of experience, but he’s pretty sure you shouldn’t marry someone two days after meeting them. That only leads to trouble and true crime podcasts about you. Oh, god. He’s gonna be a true crime podcast’s episode again, he can feel it in his bones.

“Oh my _god_ ,” says Jester, unmindful of Molly’s inner crisis, “it’s love at first sight!”

\--

Thunder rumbles.

“—then I looked into the well, as my teacher had suggested,” says Caleb, stepping out of the elevator just behind Molly, “but I must’ve leaned too far, because the next thing I knew, I was falling so far and so fast that I almost thought I would die.”

“Is that a habit of yours,” Molly says distractedly, looking out the window at the sound of thunder, half-expecting to see a tall, bulky woman somewhere in the streets, “falling off of stuff?”

“Only when someone is there to catch me,” says Caleb.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t die,” says Jester, totally enraptured, “because I’ve never met a prince before! Or—someone about to be a prince, anyway. How did you and, what’s her name—”

“Calianna.”

“—Calianna meet?”

“She saved me and my home from a rampaging troll,” says Caleb, so matter-of-fact that Molly actually stops in his tracks a moment and looks back at him. Either Caleb is a very good method actor, or he really, _really_ needs more help than Molly can give. “And when her song and mine intertwined, I—I suppose I knew, then, that she was meant to be my true love.”

Molly is leaning on the latter option. _Her song and mine intertwined_ is the stuff of Broadway musicals, too neat and glitzy to be real. Molly should know. He tells fortunes on the side, he practically relies on glitz and glamor to pull in some extra cash. “You’re sure about that?” he asks, looking for his apartment number. 509, 510, 511…

There! 512.

Caleb—hesitates. “ _Ja,_ ” he says when Molly turns, but his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I will be surer once we’ve kissed, though. They say that true love’s kiss is the most powerful force in the world.”

Jester sighs dreamily. Molly fixes a smile on his face, and looks down at the doorknob, then jams his key in with maybe a little more force than necessary. _True love’s kiss,_ gods. It’s a con, nothing more—one Molly sometimes sells to people as well, but he’s not going to lie to himself. True, romantic love, the sort that drives people to run through airports chasing after their soulmate, the sort that makes princes fight dragons for sleeping princesses? It’s so rare that it’s probably not that real. And even if it is—well. Look at Yasha, carrying the loss of her wife on her shoulders.

So true love’s kiss, as far as Molly’s concerned, is a con. Safer that way, no one holds his heart in their hands, no one can crush it easy as breathing, no one can have it buried with them in the dirt.

He doesn’t say any of that to Caleb, of course. Let him believe, for a little while longer. Molly’s not going to snap him out of that dream.

“Where is the nearest hollow tree, anyway?” Caleb asks, as Molly shoves his door open. “Or a meadow. Or somewhere else I can rest for the night. I do not wish to impose on you, Mister Mollymauk.”

Molly’s stupid heart flutters in his chest, because Molly’s stupid heart has not gotten the memo yet.

“Nah, you wouldn’t be,” he says lightly, stepping to the side to let Caleb through into the living room, decorated with all kinds of tapestries and trinkets. “The couch is free, and my roommate Yasha won’t be home for some time yet, you can take her bed too.”

“Won’t she mind?” Caleb asks, before he stops to stare at the sheer, well, _extravagance_ of the place. Molly preens. He worked hard to make this apartment look this extra.

“She doesn’t mind letting other people sleep in her bed,” Jester pipes up, immune to the charms of Molly and Yasha’s apartment by dint of exposure. “I’ve slept over a lot and I always take her bed whenever she’s gone.”

“As long as you don’t move her things around the most she’ll do about it is steal back a few pillows,” Molly says. “And in the morning we can call your Calianna, how about that?”

“Unless you have a spell that can throw your voice to her ears, she would not hear you from here,” says Caleb. Which, seriously? What? This is like the second time Caleb’s said something like that.

“I’m still working on that,” says Jester, pulling out a fine copper wire. “But it’s just way easier to use a phone, you know, and it doesn’t make you blow through _all_ your magic if you have to send three magic messages in a row.”

“Maybe save your magic for your show, Jes,” says Molly, bending down to pull the couch out. Then he pauses, and says, “So what are you going for, Mister Caleb? Couch or bed? Either way works for me.” After all, it isn’t like Caleb will be staying all that long.

“I’ll take the bed,” says Caleb, after a moment spent in deliberation. “If your roommate truly won’t mind. But if she comes home early, wake me up, and I’ll gladly sleep on the couch instead.”

\--

“What are you doing?” Jester hisses, after Caleb’s shut the door behind himself.

Molly looks up from his phone. “Calling Caduceus?” he says. “He can pick this guy up in the morning and maybe talk some sense to him. He’s almost a therapist. He’s got the best chance.”

“Wait, you don’t think he’s telling the truth?” Jester demands.

Molly glances at the door to Yasha’s bedroom, currently containing one weirdo who should really stop falling off buildings. “He’s telling the truth as he sees it,” he says. “Doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true. I mean, come on, Jester. A soon-to-be prince, just before his wedding day, shows up out of nowhere in New York, banging on the door of an advertisement looking for his fiancée?” He shakes his head. “That’s the stuff of Disney movies and rom-coms, and we both know it. Maybe he just got cold feet, that’s all.”

“Or he really is what he says he is,” says Jester. “If the Traveler can go between worlds, why can’t other people?”

Oh, hell, not Jester’s imaginary friend-maybe-god again. Molly resists the urge to roll his eyes towards the ceiling, because that would just be mean towards Jester, even if her god really just sounds like bullshit to him. “Because it’s not as possible for people like us as it is for the Traveler,” he says, after a moment spent trying to find the right wording. “Come on, Caddy, pick up.”

His hand slips into his pocket.

He stops. “Goddammit,” he says. “I left it in Yasha’s room.”

“What?” says Jester. “What did you leave?”

“Something I need to pay Caduceus for the trip,” says Molly, canceling the call with an irritated swipe of his thumb. “I’ve been keeping a stash of spices for tea in Yasha’s room and in my pockets, I used the pocket stash for tea today, and I have to go get the room stash.”

“And I’m only hearing about this now?” Jester asks.

Molly strides over to the door and pushes it open. “Sorry about this, Mr. Caleb,” he starts, “but I—”

He stops.

Caleb’s fallen asleep on Yasha’s bed, his coat hanging off the doorknob to her closet. The way Yasha’s bed is positioned near the window means that the moonlight illuminates Caleb’s face in such a way that it almost makes him look ethereal, otherworldly. His lips are turned up in a small smile, and he murmurs something in what Molly is vaguely sure is German. Probably. He doesn’t speak German.

Caleb looks—peaceful, in this light. Molly creeps closer to pull the covers up over his shoulders, brush the hair back from his face.

“Well,” he says, “I can hardly wake you up now, huh? Not when you look so happy for once.” He pats Caleb’s shoulder.

Caleb murmurs something else in German, and seems to retreat under the covers.

“Good night, Mr. Caleb,” Molly says, something warm beginning to bloom in his chest. He stands up off the bed, the stash of spices forgotten. “Sweet dreams.”

\--

Jester steps out of the apartment, and says, “Molly?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s cute.”

Molly laughs, then leans down to press a kiss to Jester’s forehead. “He’s taken, you can’t woo him,” he says, tail tapping against Jester’s.

“Well, of course I’m not,” says Jester, with a huff. “He’s cute and totally a prince, but he’s not my type, you know? You’re too into him.”

“Uh,” says Molly. “He’s _taken_ , Jes, that would be sad and pathetic even for me. Plus, he’s probably straight.”

Jester raises an eyebrow at him, then shakes her head in pity. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” she says. “And be nice to Beau!”

“I am _always_ nice to Beau,” Molly asserts. “I’ve never once insinuated I’ve slept with either of her parents.” Molly has met Beau’s father, once, years ago when he walked into Ophelia’s office and demanded that Mr. Lionett fuck off from trying to get Claudia’s bodega closed down. He’d immediately tried to sue _him_ for slander, and insisted on using _Lucien_ the whole time, as if Molly had never even legally changed his name. He wouldn’t sleep with him or Mrs. Lionett if either offered him a billion dollars and no lawsuit, he has _standards_ , and also Beau would kill him.

“Ew, Molly,” huffs Jester, but she’s grinning. She goes up on her toes to peck his cheek, then skips off down the hallway, her tail swishing all the way. “See you tomorrow!” she calls over her shoulder.

“You too!” Molly shouts back.

Then he shuts the door.


End file.
